5 Fandom Friday: Smartphone Apps I Can’t Live Without

As a writer, having a great smartphone with useful apps is extremely important to me – but let’s be real, I use my phone for a lot more than that! In tune with the Female Geek Bloggers group, here are my favorite apps for Android! I have a Galaxy s5, just for context.

Twitter

Pretty obvious, this one. Twitter is extremely important to me: not only is it where my strongest and most supportive audience frequents, but it’s also somehow become a great way to get in touch with old friends. I’ve personally connected with more people over Twitter than any other social network, so I’m on a ton. I’m also a hashtag hound in a way – when I need ideas, or want to keep up with news, I follow hashtags alongside the news to make sure I’m reading first-hand reports. It’s hard to sift through sometimes, but I love it.

Sailor Dash

I don’t really play a lot of mobile games – I really liked Tiny Death Star and Dumb Ways to Die, but as far as being an expert on the mobile platform goes, I’m far from one. But I’m trying! So when I ran across a mention of Sailor Dash on my twitter feed (see? Useful), I had to try it out. The app hasn’t updated with new scouts in a while, but I loved it so much that I reviewed it, and I still play it to this day – after almost two months of playing! Check it out here. It’s a super-fun side scroller, and the developer M-TAKE has also made run games for both Dragon Ball Z and Naruto.

Spotify

While it doesn’t carry half of my favorite songs, Spotify is my top pick when it comes to discovering new music and organizing great playlists. It’s one of the more popular apps, and though I have a TON of gripes about region locking on it, I use it every day. You can check out my playlists here!

Feedly / Bloglovin’

I couldn’t really chose between these two, since I use them both just as frequently. Feedly, like Bloglovin’, is an app where you can add in the feeds of websites and blogs that you enjoy. I like both of them equally, though Feedly’s design is much more comprehensive. You can organize the sites/blogs you follow on lists – it’s strange, I guess, but I use them both because I prefer keeping my news on Feedly, and my blogs/favorite artists and crafters on Bloglovin’.

Play Books

As a huge fan of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, I’ve been looking to re-read a lot of the titles. But it’s hard finding complete collections IRL, especially on a budget — cue Play Books! They have almost all of the EU and all of the new Star Wars books as well, including A New Dawn (which stars Kana and Hera from Star Wars Rebels). There’s a HUGE collection of stories – and an incredible selection of scifi, fantasy, and adventure titles to choose from!

I really wish I could get Sailor Dash, but sadly it’s not available for iOS. *pout face*
I’m really glad to see someone else recommend Feedly. I’ve been seeing a lot of Bloglovin recommendations, but I haven’t figured out how it differs from using Feedly so it’s something I’m going to have to play with to see which I like better.

yeah, for me, it’s a weird OCD app organization quirk – as in: “this app is for my news, this one’s for my blogs,” that kind of thing. So I understand where you’re coming from with that Feedly idea. Also, I think you can leave comments for the developer on that Sailor Dash page – I’ve been encouraging iOS users to leave (nice!) requests for an iOS version. The dev is Japanese, so I’m not sure if they read a lot of English, but it’s worth asking pilotely!

BlogLovin and Feedly are my must haves also. It’s fun seeing how many of the same apps we are using and to discover new ones too. I tried Spotify for a while, but it just wasn’t working for me…maybe I’ll go back and give it another try. But Google Play Books – definitely!!

I really like bloglovin’, especially being able to put the blogs I follow into different categories like fellow nerds and I have one for the fashion and beauty blogs I follow too. I’ve used Spotify loads, but only recently downloaded the app on my iPad and I really like the ‘Genres and Moods’ tab for finding new music. :)